City ID Card

An extensive search through the city's official site shows that it has no official city ID card program.

Questions to City Leaders

What are your plans towards creating an official means of identification for the town of Chapel Hill?

What are your plans for attracting more creative workers to the city?

Research Strategy

According to our research, there are details about a high concentration of creative workers or young families with spending power regarding the neighborhoods in the city of Chapel Hill. To identify popular neighborhoods in the city, we identified a compiled list of the best neighborhoods in the city published by Moving Kings and a corroborative source by Raleigh Realty. This source provided us with a list of the best neighborhoods in the city of Chapel Hill with their different attributes. Further search through the public domain yielded no results about neighborhoods in the city with a high concentration of creative workers or young families with spending power. We have provided the details of our findings of the city's best neighborhoods in our research brief.

Also, a thorough search through the city's official website and other reliable news sources from the city has revealed that Chapel Hill has no upcoming elections in 2020 and also City ID card.

To obtain the population of Chapel Hill between the ages of 18 and 35, we have performed the below calculations.

Total population of Chapel Hill between 18 and 35 years = 19,150 + 7,684 + 2,700 = 29,534 people.

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Chapel Hill: Business Community

Chapel Hill is home to the University of North Carolina. The university pushes the town to the forefront of "learning, technology, and environmental stewardship". The community, in turn, provides the perfect environment for progression and excellence. Businesses in Chapel Hill are open to options as it concerns initiatives and support programs. However, there remains only one local merchant association in the community.

INITIATIVES

Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership

These services include resources to guide small business startups, grants, marketing, and promotions.

The initiative provides grants to specific businesses including Facades, Sidewalk Diners, and paint and Graffiti.

"What to Do & See Downtown" is a weekly events email published by the Downtown Partnership Program. The initiative uses this email to market and promote businesses in Chapel Hill. It provides businesses with an opportunity to feature in each publication with information such as "business openings, changes to hours of operations, menu changes, and general updates."

Launch Chapel Hill

Launch Chapel Hill is an all-encompassing program designed to "increase the growth of high-impact start-ups and early-stage ventures."

The Business Accelerator Program is one of the initiative's offerings. This program allows entrepreneurs to "build early-stage businesses into self-sustaining enterprises."

The program comes with additional services such as mentorship, office space and amenities (within Chapel Hill), networking, learning opportunities, and tech resources.

PARTNERSHIPS

Grow Town and Gown Collaboration

The goals of this partnership are geared towards "A Place for Everyone, Community Prosperity and Engagement, and Good Places, New Spaces."

This partnership is crucial to the continued growth and success of Chapel Hill and to implementing the Chapel Hill 2020 comprehensive plan.

Building Integrated Communities in Chapel Hill

Town of Chapel Hill Action Plan is a list of comprehensive strategies that "address the five key focus areas that residents identified during the Community Assessment phase of BIC (Building Integrated Communities)."

Each of the strategies involves partnerships with various organizations including UNC Hospital, Orange County Affordable Housing Coalition (OCAHC), North Carolina Justice Center among others.

RFP

Chapel Hill provides a list of Request for Proposals on its website. This list comes with details such as bid number, title, start, and close date. However, no information was posted regarding the price range.

QUESTIONS

Do you have plans to provide grants to businesses other than those qualified to receive the Downtown Partnership grant either now or in the future?

If not, will there be incentives for small businesses such as reduced taxes and better transit options?

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Chapel Hill: Issues and Challenges

Among the most pressing challenges or issues facing current leaders in the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, are accessibility to housing and attracting businesses.

Housing Accessibility

One of the biggest issues facing the leaders of Chapel Hill, NC, is the housing affordability crisis. Local economic development has raised housing costs, causing large numbers of people to migrate to other cities, such as Chatham.

Importance for the Community

Rental rates charged for the smallest luxury apartment complex range from US $1,216 (Carolina Square) to $1,366 per month (Berkshire Chapel Hill). However, the monthly income of the population that receives a minimum wage is less than $1,160, making it impossible to bear the cost of renting the apartments that are being built in Chapel Hill.

Low housing prices areas, such as The Park, the residents were invited to move out to the construction of “Class A” apartments. This circumstance prevents a large part of the population settling on Chapel Hill, obliged to seek housing in other cities.

Local leaders are working on an alert system to detect, in advance, the regions where the values of affordable housing are surpassing economic accessibility. These actions aim to maintain socially diverse neighborhoods.

The leaders of the "Chapel Hill City Council" approved new affordable housing projects. Totaling $450,000, the projects contemplate the construction of new affordable houses, low-cost rents and housing assistance for low-income families.

Dorothy Faulkner, a local community leader, is also fighting for access to affordable housing.

A question to city leaders

Is there a project on the political agenda that proposes to limit the purchase of land by construction companies wanting to build luxury apartments?

Attracting Companies to Chapel Hill

Candidates for the “Chapel Hill City Council”, such as Michael Parker and Pam Hemminger, suggest that one of the biggest economic challenges is to attract new companies to the city, generating jobs and economic development.

During the past few years, the city has not invested in public policies that encourage the establishment of new companies. Licensing processes arenotsatisfying to business implementation, and no commercial areas were constructed, like offices or laboratories.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber report points to the negative net migration of the population between 25 and 35 years old.

Another issue reflecting the difficulty of attracting companies is the limitation of the city's tax base. A great share of revenue comes from taxes levied on properties, with no significant increases in tax collection.

What is being done

Local leaders are building new incentive policies to attract new companies. A recent example is the recruitment of the company Wegmans in the city, which promises to generate higher tax revenue than other local businesses, occupying an area of 450,000 square feet.

Quotes

"The Town’s partnership with the University is critical to the continued growth and success of Chapel Hill. Faculty and students, medical professionals and patients, employees and residents all share an interest in a community that meets their diverse needs, and the Town should continue to involve the University while implementing the Chapel Hill 2020 comprehensive plan."